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Can We Prevent Sexual Homicide? An Examination of Correlates of a Lethal Outcome in Sexual Assaults

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Handbook of Sexual Assault and Sexual Assault Prevention

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Abstract

Despite their low-frequency occurrence, lethal outcomes in sexual crimes—or, more simply, sexual homicides—continue to attract a lot of attention from the media, the community, and the different actors of the criminal justice system. Research on sexual homicide comes with an unavoidable paradox: despite being an unusual and relatively rare sexual crime, its consequences are too important to dismiss. This chapter examines several issues related to our understanding of sexual homicide. For instance, one of the first issues related to the study of sexual homicide is its definitional inconsistencies. Moreover, the issues surrounding the definition of sexual homicide and how some could be sexually motivated while others not highlight the fact that sexual homicide constitutes a heterogeneous type of crime. The findings related to these two aspects raise the question as to whether sexual homicide offender represents a unique type of offender. Taken together, the findings suggest that perpetrators of sexual homicide present several differences with other perpetrators of sexual crimes as well as nonsexual homicides. The differences observed are not only related to the way the crime is committed but mainly consist of differences in personality and developmental characteristics. These differences have important implications for homicide investigations, corrections, and offender management and treatment.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Criminology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada

    Eric Beauregard & Kylie S. Reale

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  1. Eric Beauregard
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  2. Kylie S. Reale
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Correspondence to Eric Beauregard .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Nevada, Reno, NV, USA

    William T. O’Donohue

  2. Department of Criminology, Law, and Justice, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

    Paul A. Schewe

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Beauregard, E., Reale, K.S. (2019). Can We Prevent Sexual Homicide? An Examination of Correlates of a Lethal Outcome in Sexual Assaults. In: O’Donohue, W.T., Schewe, P.A. (eds) Handbook of Sexual Assault and Sexual Assault Prevention. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23645-8_38

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